I. Field
The present invention relates generally to preserving items at risk of spoiling, and more particularly, to preserving decaying materials such as organic leafy substances beyond their traditional shelf lives.
II. Background
Certain products and materials are subject to spoilage. Food products and other items have limited shelf lives, ranging from less than a day to a number of weeks and sometimes more. In an effort to extend shelf lives, certain techniques have been employed, such as refrigeration or freezing. Freezing is inadequate for materials such as leafy green organic substances, such as lettuce, brussels sprouts, and so forth. Both refrigeration and freezing have issues with transportation and cost. While some transportation has been developed to assist in transportation of items at risk of spoilage, such as refrigerated trucks, these can be costly to employ and/or provide.
Some have developed a method of removing air from a closed container, such as a deformable bag, with the belief that this will preserve the material therein. The results for using this method have been mixed. While there are certain situations where products or materials subject to spoilage can be preserved by removing air from their closed containers, such as by vacuum sealing or vacuum packing the products or materials in a closed container, in many situations the additional preservation time, i.e. the marginal increase in time of preservation, is minimal. In some instances, removing air from a closed container also draws moisture out of the product or material within the container, which can impact the appearance, taste, texture, and other qualities of the product or material, and the preservation time of some products or materials can be decreased when air and/or moisture has been removed.
It would therefore be beneficial to provide a device or apparatus that improves the preservation of products or materials subject to spoilage, including but not limited to organic leafy substances, which improves on previous designs and is relatively inexpensive to produce.